Captivity

by Ann Herendeen

  Tomorrow night, little lady, he thought to me. Tomorrow I’ll be your Margrave Aranyi. Then you too can start earning your keep.

  I bolted out of his mind in panic and fear. The malevolence in his words was clear enough, but not the sense. I knew he was planning to kill Dominic, but marrying or possessing widowed ‘Gravina Aranyi would not make Reynaldo Margrave Aranyi. Yet he had not said “your husband,” or even “your lord husband.” He had used Dominic’s title.

  My simple pleasure in the stolen food and the slight resurge of strength was gone. I had hoped my extra energy would help me learn Reynaldo’s plans, but his mind was peculiar, even for a telepath. His brain waves were different from others I had encountered, inappropriate thoughts appearing in wrong places, emotions transposed or distorted. The usual signals I received from others’ minds were masked or nonexistent in his. Reynaldo’s bizarre personality had defeated me, it seemed. Possibly his madness offered a perverse kind of protection against intrusion, or easy interpretation of what the intrepid explorer might find.

  And yet his mental pathways reminded me of something. Could I have encountered someone similar once? No. It would have made a strong impression. Repellent, but unforgettable.

  The night passed in disordered dreams and feverish nightmares. Dominic fondled me, then turned slowly into Reynaldo while I stared at his face in horror, the features melting and reforming like holographic effects. The man laughed in Dominic’s deep baritone, then sniggered in Reynaldo’s maniacal voice and forced his erect penis down my throat until I gagged. I woke up in the blackness of predawn, on my back, my dry mouth open, my head pounding as if wooden stakes were being driven in.

  CHAPTER 10

  This morning I had fever, no doubt of it. I felt Val’s forehead. It was hot, flushed, sweaty. “My head hurts,” Val said, whining at my lingering touch, scratching himself fitfully. I peered inside his shirt, could see little in the semi-darkness, and inserted my hand. He had the same rash as mine, the little raised oozing blisters, although he had no wool on his skin. In his sickness he barely moved, but wet his diaper where he lay.

  I looked at Jana, afraid to touch her. Jana stared back at me, frightened by the terror she saw in my face. “What’s the matter Mama? Are you sick?”

  She seemed as healthy as ever. Please let her stay well. Isis and Astarte watch over my girl. I prayed to the goddesses of motherhood and childbirth like any credulous peasant woman. “It’s just a cold,” I said, my voice a croak. “Val has it too.” I felt a horrible foggy delirium overtaking me. “It’s safer if you don’t come too close.” The effort of speaking unbalanced me. I clawed through the dress at my suppurating skin.

  Michaela was surly and silent when she brought breakfast. She had a dark black eye and another tooth was missing, blood still encrusted on her mouth. I forgot to tell Jana to cover her short hair, but the woman never noticed.

  After the brief meal was done, the door locked, Jana shook her head at me like an adult. “Aren’t you hungry, Mama?” she asked over and over, to my repeated, increasingly unconvincing denials. Jana stood in front of me, feet apart, hands on hips, demanding a privilege she knew she had earned. “You’re sick. You need food. Let me go out.”

  My mind wobbled tipsily through the spinning in my head, the buzz of fever, struggling to perform a gargantuan task that had once come automatically: thinking. Yesterday’s raid had been so easy and successful, it was tempting to try again. But the consequences of failure seemed too terrible to contemplate. Dominic was supposed to arrive tonight. Surely we could hold out until then. “No, love,” I said. “Papa will be here soon. There’s no need to take such a chance.”

  Val and I lay in a stupor. He suckled less and only whimpered when I spoke to him. Jana fretted with worry. Every few minutes she climbed up to the grate. “It’s safe, Mama,” she said as she jumped down, her footfalls rocking my brain like thunderclaps. “I could go.” I thought of what I had seen and heard last night. It wasn’t safe, not at all. I had been mad yesterday, sending my daughter into danger for so little gain.

  Each time Jana proposed going I shook my head. I swigged water from the skin, tried to get some into Val, to fight the fever. The day went by without incident. Val nursed a little, then slept. Jana gave up on her fruitless activities and lay down, near me but not touching. She was growing foreign, the strong and healthy one unconsciously distancing herself from the weak, sickly ones that Val and I had become.

  Late in the afternoon I felt something in my mind. The fever was reaching its peak, the delirium growing stronger. Amalie, Amalie! The voice formed a pattern, separating itself from the blur of constant headache, grew sharper with my prolonged inattention. Dominic! I tried to clear the fuzz from my brain.

  Dominic, I thought to him. Where are you?

  My husband’s mind was shielded, open only so far as to allow filtered communication. It’s better you don’t know, he said. He spoke brusquely, forcing his worry and love down into a part of his mind where those emotions wouldn’t interfere with the difficult work he had to do. But listen. I’m not coming tonight. I’ll be another day. I’m sending Niall on ahead to start the negotiations while I– while I do this. If there’s a problem with that fucking maniac, tell him I’m just outside the walls. Niall knows how to make him believe it. Dominic prepared to break communion. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can.

  Dominic! I called out to him once, and stopped myself. What was I going to do? Tell him I was sick? That Val and I had a high fever? What would that accomplish? Dominic was not going to rescue us for another day. If he had made a decision like that, it was out of necessity, because he needed more time to complete his preparations.

  What is it, beloved? Dominic asked, concerned by my frantic cry.

  My mind plodded through the mire of my delirium and fear. Reynaldo’s planning to kill you, I said.

  Yes, my love, Dominic said, as if I had told him I loved him. I know that.

  I mean it, I said, struggling to sit up. That was it. I had to warn Dominic. He’s trying to lure you here so he can—

  Please, Amalie, Dominic said. Don’t distress yourself. He thought more carefully. Do you know anything specific?

  I’m sorry, I said. I can’t– it’s difficult to go inside his mind. He always knows I’m there, and it scares me.

  My poor darling, Dominic said. Just hold on a little longer. He remembered the pleading he had sensed when I called his name. Is something else wrong?

  Nothing, my love, I said. I was worried, and glad to hear your voice. I will look forward to Niall’s arrival and the negotiations. I forced as much false courage into the thoughts as I could.

  Be strong, my lady wife, Dominic said. In another day I can be strong for both of us. He did not kiss me in farewell, or touch me, or ask after the children. His mental and physical powers were almost completely absorbed by his current endeavor, and he did not want to risk revealing the details in the openness of full communion. Ignorance was my best protection, as Reynaldo would not be able to pry knowledge from my mind that it did not possess.

  “Was Papa here?” Jana asked, seeing my attempt to sit up and clear my head.

  “Yes,” I said. “But he’s not coming tonight.”

  Jana swallowed, then nodded. “He’s planning his strategy.” She studied me for a few seconds while I worked to keep my expression neutral, apparently not succeeding. “Let me go out,” Jana said, pleading now. “You need food, because we have to wait another day.” As I hesitated, Jana pressed her advantage. “I have your knife. I’ll be safe.”

  I can only justify my actions because of the fever. The delirium made me do it. In truth, there was no excuse, except that I was weak and frightened, for Val and for myself. The bandits had gone out again after their midday break. Supper was still an hour away. Surely Jana could be out and back in no time.

  Turning the lock was more difficult today. The spinning and swaying in my brain made it hard to find the correct angle for bending the l
ight from my inner flame into my eyes, but I got it at last and Jana eased out. She ran upstairs, sure of the way now, but hesitated once outside. Yesterday’s sense of mission was not as strong today, with no rehearsal to remind her of the itinerary she must follow. Her mind was awhirl with excitement and she was desperate to explore, as she had been deprived of doing the first time. She made a decision, ran in a low crouch toward the front courtyard.

  The other way, I thought intensely to her, pushing the desire into her mind. It seemed harsh, like flogging an animal, but my daughter felt no pain, only an atypical urge to move in the less interesting direction I was pointing her. She slowed and straightened, then retraced her steps with dragging feet.

  When she was halfway back, Val moaned and I had to turn my attention to him. He was burning up like a heated stone in a fireplace. I knew what high fever could do to a child. It could fry his brain, turn him into a living corpse. I sprinkled the last trickles of water in the skin over him, hoping to bring his fever down. Then I wrapped him in my cloak and held him. When I tried to focus on Jana again I had lost her.

  An eternity went by, or perhaps my own internal clock had slowed. Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped. Insane giggles bubbled up in my thoughts, more like Reynaldo’s dysfunction than a mother’s care. Stop it, I scolded my own brain. Act responsible.

  I forced myself back to sobriety. With the growing twilight I had no way to tell if Jana had been gone five minutes or five hours. No, I thought, Michaela would have brought supper. It hasn’t been long. It’s just my fear stretching the minutes into hours.

  As I had the thought, the footsteps came slapping down the stairs. Panic almost made me pass out. Then I had an inspiration. I found Jana’s dress and felt for the swatch of hair I had saved. I unwound my cloak from around Val and bunched it into a lumpy shape on the straw. A corner of the dress’s skirt peeped out at one end, some black tresses at the other.

  The lock squeaked and worked back and forth, followed by loud cursing. Michaela burst in, a harpy come to life. At the sight of me and Val sitting calmly on the straw, she stopped. “Fucking witch!” she screamed. “How did you open the lock?”

  In my rush I had had no time to lock the door, had not wanted to bolt it with Jana outside. “You left it open,” I said. My head throbbed and my fever spiked sharply. “After breakfast, you forgot to lock it.”

  Michaela paused, thinking. She had been preoccupied this morning, angry over her daughter’s rape and her own beating. I tried to enter her mind and confuse her further. My consciousness was in such a muddle from the fever it could only help. The woman had no specific memories of the morning’s tasks, could retrieve no image of the lock or the door from the cloud of her unhappy thoughts. “And you like it here so much you just stayed?”

  “Where would I go?” I said. This was the truth and we both knew it. The door protected as much as it confined me.

  Michaela peered into the gloomy, foul cell. “Where’s the girl?”

  I pointed to the heap on the straw. “She’s sick,” I said in a whisper. “Asleep,” I added quickly, moving to intercept Michaela as she bent to look. “We’re all sick, me and my son. But my daughter has it worst. Please don’t disturb her. If she sleeps, perhaps she’ll recover.”

  Michaela hesitated. I could sense her dawning apprehension. The sickness shone out of my eyes and my flushed greasy skin. Val looked just as bad. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Is my fine lady having a fainting spell?”

  “Typhus,” I said. I had been poring over my knowledge of extinct Terran diseases, had remembered the name of one that came from lice and filth.

  The woman jumped back in terror. The word was a synonym for death in poor villages, in any community like this one with insufficient food and worse sanitation, where lice infested the population. Probably the bandits were all survivors or carriers and had little to fear, but the woman might not know that. In this cell, she saw only an angel of death and her two cherubim.

  I knew it wouldn’t work, but I had nothing to lose. “If you leave the food, I’ll give it to my daughter when she wakes up.” I tried for the plain, matter-of-fact voice of authority.

  Michaela woke from her dream of death. “No you don’t, lying cunt. Think I’m stupid, but we’ll see who’s so smart.” In a louder voice she said, “The girl will get breakfast in the morning. If she’s alive.” She banged the door shut and locked it with shaking hands.

  I lay on the straw in an agony of terror, huddling close to the pathetic effigy I had made as if it really were my daughter. Where was Jana? I had lost contact with her somewhere outside, could not seem to find her now. The sickness and another day without food had accelerated my crypta’s decline. I could receive thoughts, if they were strong and projected at me accurately, but using my gift in an active way was almost out of the question.

  If I have killed my daughter, I should kill myself. But what of Val? And Dominic? I had to hold on until Dominic arrived. I must do everything possible to protect my family until we were rescued, or die trying.

  Flat on my back, with Val nestled beside me, I made the inner flame and prepared to summon the telepathic ether. Much as I loathed this pea soup of mental tesseract, especially now when my mind was already resisting every known law of physics, it was my only chance to find my daughter. The ether was like a mental highway, expediting the process of forming communion between distant minds. It was how Dominic and I had “visited” each other before our marriage, and how Dominic had saved me from death in childbirth.

  The little fire at the end of my thumb had a sickly greenish tint today, which complicated the operation, but the ether was always there, at the edges of rational thought. I let myself fall into its syrupy, gummy maw. Jana, I thought. Jaaa-naaa. The ether swirled around me, rising like steam from manholes on a city street in winter. My brain pulsed with the high fever; the rash marched across my skin in phalanxes of irritation. The green light from the fading spark of my brain’s electric energy flickered in rhythm with my breath and my pulse. Uncoordinated at first, all the various movements synchronized as I worked, keeping time with the beat of my heart.

  Ja-a-na-a, I pushed the name out, thinking with the rhythm. She wouldn’t be able to perceive my mental searching, but I had no better idea. If I sent my thoughts out I might find her, with the instinct of mother for child, would recognize her by the sense of completion I would feel when my mind met hers. Ja-a-na-a. I worked through all the nearby locations I had seen with Jana yesterday, the back courtyard, the outbuildings and the wall. Nothing.

  My mind held still, stymied. Where now? Perhaps she had come back inside. There was the entrance to the hall at the front of the castle, a passage leading from the wide doorway to the stairs and the upper floors. I followed it. Nothing there. Or, wait? I hovered, exploring with my mind.

  Several booted feet clumped down the stairs to the storeroom, stood outside the door. I could sense Reynaldo there, in the corridor. He would punish me if he caught me using my gift, even such a little thing as the inner flame, would take Val. So close, so maddeningly close. I stopped my search and snuffed the flame.

  Someone was with Reynaldo, someone I knew and trusted. The familiar presence entered my mind. Masculine, young, scared but hiding it. Dominic? In my delirium I couldn’t quite make the connection. I had seen Dominic as a younger man, every day at Aranyi in the portrait of him as a young officer, and had encountered him in the ether, where the image we mature adults project to others is that ideal self of decades past, visualized from our memories. This young man was tall like Dominic, slim and dark-haired. He wore the Aranyi uniform, gray with black insignia. But Dominic couldn’t be here. He had said he wasn’t coming tonight.

  I groped my way mentally toward this man, the one sympathetic presence in the surrounding hostility, identifying his defining qualities. Vir, sensitive, intelligent, confident in his proficiency with both sword and speech. It must be Dominic after all, doing a convincing job of making ev
en me believe he was here. Dominic, I let myself send my thoughts to him. My love. I thought– No, I mustn’t think that. Dominic had said to act as if he were outside the walls, to make Reynaldo believe it.

  Lady Amalie? The young man connected with my mind and immediately recoiled, shocked by what he found, the sickness, debility and disorientation. My lady! He recovered his control. Dominic will avenge this mistreatment, never fear. Niall Galloway, Dominic’s companion. Yes, now I remembered, Dominic had said he was sending Niall on ahead.

  Voices murmured outside the door, low and urgent, arguing. One rose above the others, shouting them down. “Typhus?” Reynaldo was scornful. “What a crock! Why not the plague? ‘Graven lies! Let’s see for ourselves.” I held Val tightly in my arms, waited trembling while the lock turned. Reynaldo entered first, followed closely by Niall and four or five bandit guards. A couple of them carried torches and the unaccustomed brightness dazzled my eyes, forcing me to turn away. “Your husband sent his male whore to comfort you,” Reynaldo said as he stepped inside the little room.

  Niall kept his poise despite the insult. He had an intrinsic dignity; from Dominic he had learned how to crush boorishness and pretention with aristocratic disdain. Consciously imitating his lover’s graceful strength, he carried himself in the same way, moving more like a dancer than a soldier, concealing the warrior’s talents behind a facade of elegance. He looked Reynaldo up and down with a perfect imitation of Dominic’s sneer, and said, “You may flatter me all you like, but you won’t get yourself a better deal.” He turned his back in dismissal and knelt to me. The other bandits snickered at their leader’s loss of face.

  Reynaldo had hoped to embarrass Niall, to start negotiations off with his opponent at a disadvantage. His men muttered after the brief show of mirth, shaking their heads in disbelief at such reckless behavior. For some, it was the beginning of a new phase, the first time they would seriously question their leader’s judgment.